1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to computer systems, and more specifically relates to apparatus and methods for reading electronic documents.
2. Background Art
Since the dawn of the computer age, computers have evolved and become more and more powerful. In our present day, computers have become indispensable in many fields of human endeavor including engineering design, machine and process control, information storage and retrieval, and office computing. One common use for computers is to allow a user to read electronic documents.
Many people have developed their own reading techniques for reading large documents. For example, some people may train themselves to scan the first sentence of paragraphs and, if the content is not interesting in the first sentence, to jump to the next paragraph. These techniques are useful, but are limited to human skills and training, and are better suited to reading hard print rather than electronic documents.
The prior art offers no assistance for a reader to more quickly comprehend a large electronic document. Without a way for a computer system to help a user to more easily comprehend electronic documents, users will be forced to use manual methods to determine the relevant contents of an electronic document.